Quitting time comes early today

Rosie O’Donnell is a quitter. The Big Three automakers should quit while they’re ahead. Hugo Chavez doesn’t want to quit…ever. And the Swedes don’t know when to quit.

Hugo first

Venezuelan madman Hugo Chavez is already in office until 2013. Now he wants his National Assembly to come up with yet another try at a constitutional amendment that would lift the nation’s term limits for presidents. He wants to be president forever. Chavez is a crazy guy who tried to take over the government by force, gave a good surrender interview, went to prison and came out a national celebrity.

Whole lot of Rosie. In fact, too much Rosie

Rosie O’Donnell used to be a celebrity, but now she’s just a punchline. And not in a good, show business way. NBC heavily promoted the former comedian’s variety show for a month. It was planned as a throwback to the days of the “Ed Sullivan Show”, a live variety show with plenty of guests, comedy and music. The show, however, was stillborn, with only 5 million viewers. O’Donnell says she’s pulling the plug on the show.

For whom the bail tolls

The Big Three automakers are headed to Washington today to get Congress’ name on a $25 billion bailout. No one wanted to give them the money last month, but were going to do it out of some form of patriotic duty and economic common sense. Then the Mensas riding herd over the demise of American manufacturing came to Washington in private planes to beg for cash. Not good. No money. Lots of bad p.r. and negative feedback. They’ll need to double up on their groveling to get the cash, which rich guys are loathe to do. Congress should give them the money, but only if they pay for the undercoating, too. On a positive note, the CEOs won’t be flying in private jets this time. In fact, the head of Ford is driving to Washington.

Me, myself and you

While on the subject of fjords, the Swedes have too much time on their hands, which they’re using to shake their own hands. I think researchers there wanted to know why we feel that “we” are in our own bodies. To do that, they mounted cameras on mannequins and on researchers. That video was fed into virtual reality glasses on test subjects, giving them the impression that they were in someone else’s body. The mannequin was tickled and stabbed to see how the test subjects reacted. They freaked. Then the person shook hands with themselves, i.e. a researcher wearing a video cam aimed at the person. Again, weird. Possible uses: helping people deal with their image of themselves, or in developing nerd fests such as the online game Second Life.